


dis|this|connet|ed

by NebulaViburnum



Category: DRAMAtical Murder (Visual Novel), DRAMAtical Murder - All Media Types, Outlast (Video Games)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Blood and Gore, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Emotionally Compromised, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Friendship/Love, Love Confessions, Multi, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Bond, Psychic Violence, Psychological Horror, Psychological Trauma, Psychology, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Sex, Unrequited Love, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-08-21
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:25:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4582398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NebulaViburnum/pseuds/NebulaViburnum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles  investigates Murkoff and becomes the host for the Walrider. A recording of a program called Rhyme has a bad effect on him so he decides to investigate further — an unexpected encounter with Clear takes him to Midorijima, the island. There he meets Aoba Seragaki, a young man who seems to have an odd connection with Miles's Walrider. It seems Miles's mind is losing stability  and Aoba agrees to help him with psychic powers. Only, Aoba becoming destructive may awaken in Walrider more violent tendencies. In all of this Waylon Park has a divorce from Lisa and comes to Japan with Noiz to investigate how Rhyme is also a prototype for a new engine . Toue's successors and him are all out to finish Wernicke's projects. As all this is happening Sei Seragaki forms an unusual bond with a defeated and depressed Jeremy Blaire who he wants to help to recover. And aside that one of The Twins gets fascinated with Koujaku, as a beautiful alternative to the horrors he has faced. While the other starts a deep friendship with Noiz's younger brother Theo. All these also attract Trager who wants to pursue Miles but attracts Ryuho to him including Virus and Trip only to be saved by Mizuki.</p><p>TOTAL WIP</p>
            </blockquote>





	dis|this|connet|ed

**~ the rhyme in the engine**

 

Now wind torments the field,  
turning the white surface back  
on itself, back and back on itself,  
like an animal licking a wound.  
  
Nothing but white--the air, the light;  
only  _one brown milkweed pod_  
bobbing in the gully, smallest  
brown boat on the immense tide.  
  
A single green sprouting thing  
would restore me. . . .  
  
Then think of the tall delphinium,  
swaying, or the bee when it comes  
to the tongue of the burgundy lily. 

_February: Thinking Of Flowers_ by Jane Kenyon

………………………………………………..

 

Miles waited. And the wait was obscene. Well, it was standard for elitism to test "patience is a virtue" with no virtues of their own. Miles waited and then saw the cocky face of Jeremy Blaire, one of Murkoff’s elite, look at him with a predatorial smirk. Miles returned that smirk with a predatorial smile of his own. Blaire’s smirk wavered when he realised he was not meeting with the typical flare of journalism’s investigators. This man exuded a cocky confidence as his own; did not falter in his execution of owning his “space” so to speak and the rigmaroles of courtesy would not be needed to be fully applied here. The vehement congestion in the atmosphere that made a whole range of anger and frustration come over Blaire erupted also as impatience and boldness in Miles.

“So, you are Milles Upshur?”

“It’s Miles, not Milles, and you are Blaire? A witch project in the making?”

Blaire hated the comparison. It echoed of a frat house pledge mixed with drunken condescension and it tasted bitter in his tongue as bile must be thought of. Blaire pointed out: “Where are your manners? Mr. Blaire would do unless you want all of your ass handed to you.”

“I am not in a gaming mood, myself.” Miles treaded with brevity and confidence but knew too much tongue-twisting will go nowhere, “Please, royal pain in the ass, sit down.”

Jeremy sat down with grace and full of arrogant mirth, not to humour the words but to show he cared not for insults. “Well, it’s always the small fries that want a piece of the pie in the sky even though Valhalla is for warriors.” Blaire looked inarguably livid now, with a scowl on his face, “Do not think we will lay idle as you try to tarnish our reputations with that Alsab article. It was weak and weakness does not survive in this world.”

“What’s weak is the harassment of deprived people in South-East Asia and other places to fund your little pay-checks. You guys are just a bunch of overgrown frat guys harassing the hardworking people. People who pay to see their children live longer not from something serious as cancer but to just seem them survive with clean water. While you think it’s perfectly okay to drink your iced drinks and deluxe waffles.”

“My coffee is reasonably black and with a tad bit of sugar.” Blaire looked Miles in a gaze desiring murder, “Something even South East Asians can enjoy no?”

“I suppose the blackness of a black hole is more reasonably understanding than Murkoff elite as you.” Miles talked making Jeremy look in surprise, “Because it bends light and in essence knows how to coexist  with things; we have pulsars and neutron stars orbiting the universe in their gravity-dense clouds and here you guys, just a corporation, try to consume and spit out the dregs of bones even from the body of mice. No tad bit of sugar can cure the menace in your souls.”

“I think I am far had with you waxing poetic Mr. Upshur.” Jeremy glared and sneered at the determined journalist, “Will you comply with our list of terms? We can make ourselves mutually comply. It is important that we both coexist too. After all, there is always plenty of others things to chase in the universe.”

Miles closed his eyes, smiled for a bit, looked at Jeremy’s  grin and grinned too, with all the same stance, “You know I always wanted to know what happens when a seemingly unstoppable force meets a seemingly  unmoveable object. Do you not think it’s interesting to see what can happen when two black holes collide?”

Jeremy Blaire’s smile faded and he looked about as ready to punch Miles on the face. “We are finished here.” Blaire got up with perfectly, composed posture, “Next time you bother us prepared to meet the heat. We are a respectable corporation. And we aren’t going to let some **no-name** , **disgraced** , journalist try to sully our name.”

“If it’s a disgrace to tell the **truth** then it is a disgrace to still **be alive** , **be human**.” Miles countered with a granite composure that beat Jeremy’s.

Jeremy scowled and scathingly looked at the journalist and was leaving. Miles’s comment stopped him, “White whales…”

“What?” Blaire looked incredulously at him.

“Alsab almost sounds like Ahab does it not?” Miles got up, meeting the eye-level of Blaire, “I wonder, you guys drain water as though you want to create an ocean and a white whale to chase around and be singularly obsessed as Ahab who doesn’t give a fuck besides the whale. I wonder…” then he paused, “What is Murkoff’s white whale then?”

Jeremy stared at Miles. Miles stared back. Then, conclusively, “Tread lightly Mr. Upshur.”

With that the meeting at the restaurant was over, Miles returned to his latte.

Something definitely seemed like the opening of Pandora. Though all that was heard was a whimper in the wind.

* * *

 

There was a rhyme in the engine. What was it from? Was it a necessarily from a nursery-song? No matter how he tried to shake it off — will bullets and bile leaking out — he could feel it mouthing on him like some form of palimpsest for his brain and it hurt a lot. What was it saying? What did it want to do? All these questions suddenly made him scream and all he knew was a scream.

Nothing else.

Like his entire life could be read, both forwards and reversed, in a scream.

It was frustration.

It was something he couldn’t completely understand: but he was victim to it. And it tortured him without pith or pity. And he wandered in his head (as his body hummed and raged as something that was more machine, losing its wheel, its axle, its tires, than something that tires as human) he had suspicions that his DNA was no longer human and that made him cringe and the desire to cry was overwhelming, even seductive.

So, he cried.

And lost himself in that crying.

Everything felt cold and uncertain.

Like this was the beginning, of a beginning…thought processes raged on his head, as though he was learning himself again…learning what he was…learning to talk, to walk, to run and it felt odd…as he had no idea what was going on…why he felt discombobulated but also in sync with himself — his senses on an override he couldn’t possibly explain; feeling each pore of skin and flow of blood, his body became white and soon white swam his eyes mixed with some starry translucent constellation of his tears whose nudity didn’t warrant innocence of any sort. These were tears, as enriched with the DNA of experience as sperm, ovum or any lymph node in the stream. And he could hear the chorus of voices — sad, mad, angry, ecstatic, innocent, breaking down, contemplating and much more. And he know that he knew all of them intimately and none of them a lot — or, just maybe, the Walrider knew them and that is how he knew them: as a tale sung like a lullaby which to him was also a lullaby.

What was myth here? Or, what was the ultimate reality?

The feeling of being destroyed, destroying and surviving — were those the feelings of him or the Walrider? What should the Walrider be called?

It screeched and screamed; clawing and crawling in him as if agonised. Probably, the merge was starting to pain it or _him_ as well.

What could he call it?

Calling it phantom was not the regular deal…should it call it ghost or phantom or alp as the generic name he remembered of the Walrider mythology? No, he was shadow…he was like a penumbra to the mind…maybe, it would be fitting to call him or it Umbra? Maybe…

Then the screeching felt fathomably violent but unfathomably sad and confused…the black and white vortexes in his brain and in the nanomachines of the Walrider felt like shaking into a mitosis of its own.

“You are like a shadow that blinds the ultra-violet light that can make radium out of the soul…”  Miles did not know why he spoke this. The static of the Walrider was unforgettably tormenting. It seemed trying to also get its breathing in check. Like it got mangled with its own shot of adrenalin — or, whatever such a twisted nanopowered ghoul would compensate as adrenaline. After killing those military personnel, chasing off Wernicke and a few scarped survivors…almost killing Jeremy Blaire…well, Jeremy’s outside was pretty symmetrical enough…inside organs and tissues were torn and pretty riddled…even with proper medical attention his body might fail and death might seem imminent.

Miles had gone outside. There he saw his jeep being taken by a man. And something terrestrially new, as if by-lines on a computer, computed that this was “mutemail” and his name was Waylon Jae-Hwa Park: half Korean-American. Programmer. Whistleblower. All these precepts came to mind.  But he didn’t enjoy these terms.  Seeing him go off made him angry. But then he quietly went out into the grooves of grass and mountain terrain to the back of the building.

 The small shed near there was a little break in security — it betrayed a rustic innocence. Something the institution might have had, certainly the terrain. Slinking down with hugged knees and a throbbing burn in his chest and a headache, he pined for water. And a nearby hose eliminated that wanting with almost wanton quickness. Dousing himself in all that water cleaned his face, wetted his blood and grime smeared clothes, and leaked out to his already bloodied jeans. The odd recording, something sheathed beneath the static and Rorschach images, bled and hummed into his brain. A voice and a pair of eyes that were soothing; it was inky but also suggestive, sticky with cerebral awareness, but then dimmed into confusion and chaos.

Whatever it was, it unsettled Walrider, and it unsettled him.

Then he saw it, wrapped in inky trails, was also something silken, wept like tendrils — it was unadulterated hair, long, thread, un-cut, with a magnetism that is both awful yet terrific. It was something that plays the rhyme as vibrations; those vibrations made his bones shudder as old phantom corridors. Miles wept longer now…his sobs a manifestation of something pivotal in him; as though the very **human** thing he could shoulder and understand…there was nothing now he felt he couldn’t do that would be not perverse or made less culpable.

But, he wanted to remain who he was. That rage when he almost ripped apart Jeremy Blaire. Partly, that had been his conscious human rage. But it was amplified into something monstrous and vacant and contradictorily filled with immense barbarism as though only a kill and desecration would impinge what he wanted —

— and Miles Upshur had never been that. So it hurt him irrevocably.

The soft smell of a something, carefully moist as though with dewy points, wafted from the shed. At one point he saw the ground broken, the tile or cement, gone, in the corner, grew reddish-purple fireweed or willow-herb and Miles shivered as he recognised their smell. Something pained him in his stomach and so he decidedly, impulsively, took a clump of the flowers, and then ate them raw.

The taste felt good. His mouth felt more tangible now, the mucous of the plant tangled with the saliva of his mouth, and erupted in something viscerally poignant but he could feel a crackling in his tongue and the nascent tingling of cells in amylase and then a quite hum. The hair, blue in pitch, skyline contrasts and gradient, etched in his mind, from light cerulean to a regal navy, with slight flecks of dusk-dawn purple and cyan made him think if he was being induced to something at its core psychedelic.

There was a mean smile. Then, it made the Walrider screech and him bolt as though he was struck by lightness as the voice said “destroy” and suddenly he was in a dark place with errant flashes of neon soaked white light as though his mind was being torn…but he was not really feeling it…then a calm…an ocean in sunset…a beautiful naked youth in the water…looking at him…turning back…with a smile, now no longer insidious, sweet and perfect. Miles noticed he was naked too. And the person in the water smiled, “Be one with me.” He called out.

And then Miles fell asleep.

Fifteen or so minutes had passed when a young man wearing a lab-coat and a gas mask arrived walking brusquely. Though he wiped his forehead, “What a slaughterhouse. I am so aghast at what happened.” Then more cheerfully, “I can feel the voice from here.”

The young man opened the shed door only to suddenly come face to face with the Walrider, who looked at him questionably. Then the man took off his mask. And smiled.

“Jellyfish dream in the ocean, in the air, my mouth cradles them in absolutely pleasure

One day I know I will dream with them with my spine perforating the jelly of their care…”

The Walrider’s static blinked and etched and shuddered like a television meeting bad reception. Then it went blank. Then immobile.

Clear smiled: “I don’t know how long that will last, so I better be quick.” Looking over at Miles, he looked excited, “I can’t wait to know you. You are as perfect as Aoba-san!”

* * *

 

Well, the divorce had finalised. There was really no going back. Though it was starting a bit already before the incident. Waylon had thought Lisa might have been happy to see him. She was. She was glad he was alive. However, both their minds got easily unsettled. They needed to be separated still and…Lisa somewhat implied she was seeing someone new. Waylon wasn’t surprised and he wasn’t angry rather he was happy she could move on especially now. Though he wished he could have made love with her one more time. Probably to feel alive. To feel that the act of being human was not only rooted in insanity and violence.

Julian had asked him to stay in his house. For a short while. Something about Julian Feral was pretty unusual. After giving him that speech about knowing that his life could be over and all the hardships that could be encountered. Yeah, his life was over. Yet, even if it seemed selfish he had to do it after what he witnessed. Lisa was a bit annoyed about it though — that there was no calls to her before making this decision. She had easily said it was not only his decision and that after everything, they had been once married, and had two boys, Eli Shin Li-Park and Mark Xun Li-Park could use also the heads-up. Waylon was a bit stubborn at first but then apologised to Lisa who understood yet felt that relocating and all of this was pretty intense. Lisa Li was not really that subtle. And that had been one of the reasons he loved her, had loved her romantically for. Now, their bond was familial but a bit distant. She had started a relationship a while back with a Jonas, Waylon knew about this as the papers were being finalised. It pained him because from what had happened he could not stay with his sons. And he was envious of Jonas because maybe the defacto father would be him now.

Waylon ate a quiet dinner of pasta with Julian who then said that there was another person in transit with them in the house.  Julian looked a bit annoyed, but then a bit worried, and then said something about that man wanting to talk to them “He is young, and socially awkward and I am sorry in prior if he says anything out of turn.” Waylon looked at him questionably, “Well, he has had a bit of a sheltered life and he is a computer geek that tinkers at times a bit too much.”

“I am a computer geek too.” Waylon said this a bit with an annoyed air.  The stereotype of the computer sciences person, geeky and socially awkward and persistently silly was too 80s Revenge of the Nerds faire (which he sometimes questioned as in one scene in the first movie a nerd does rape a person, like how in American Horror Story, he pretends to be someone else to have sex with a girl that also annoyed me as he hated when men were dehumanised as being only creatures of violent acts as such to re-centre their maleness. It feels masculinity and humanity became two distinct things and to him being a man in that sense didn’t mean being a human).

“Uhmm, it’s not what you think.” Getting that vibe Julian spoke, “It’s just, he is kinda too persistent, and many other computer guys do complain about him. But he does work part-time or freelances for VERAlinks  and I do appreciate his hard work. Sometimes he asks weird, to the point personal questions.”

“Oh.” Waylon looked bewildered, “Is he a guest in your house?”

“Yeah, he is traveling.” Julian Feral, “He is a German by birth but possesses Japan citizenship. Apparently, he was living in Japan as a form of asylum.”

“Asylum?” Waylon now looked more bewildered, “Is he some sort of political refugee?”

“No. I just thought it was interesting to live in a country where cherry blossoms were abundant, though not the mainland. I needed a change of pace.” The voice came from a blond man, looked young, yet his eyes watery-green as though slice of blade soaked in a pond, mint with a hint of grass, and they narrowed much, however, he looked keenly at Waylon for a while. His voice has started with a monotone, flat assessment of facts, then it widens its ‘jaws’ and he smiled and looked piqued: “Are you Jae-Hwa?”

“Yes, I am Waylon Jae-Hwa Park.” Waylon mouthed his middle Korean name with a bit of alien movement; most people did not address him with it.

“I wanna call you Jae-Hwa, it sounds cool. Waylon is a nice name too. I might use both.” The blond man said with a slight smirk, then extended his hand, “Nice to meet you. I am Noiz.”

“Noiz, is it pronounced like ‘Noise’ as the phenomenon?” Waylon wondered if that really his name was, scratching his head slightly.

“It can be said like that. Some Japanese people also call it like ‘Nos’ or ‘Nose’ which kinda goes with ‘knows’ so I ain’t complaining.” Noiz seemed to smirk widely know.

“His real name is Wilhelm or Wim Eckart Wolfmeyer.” Julian casually drank some water and dug onto his bowl of pasta, “The Noiz name, however you spell it or say it, is a pretty dull but I guess somewhat alias.”

“At least my real last name is not Feral.” Noiz looked mad, quietly annoyed, “What sort of name is that: at times too clichéd to be an alias and at times too funny to be taken seriously.” Them grabbing a bowl of pasta he ate and smiled, “Well, I guess I can forgive his indiscretions a bit huh, Jae-Hwa?” Smiling as he scoped in some more food and Waylon was surprised to see him, in an instant happy and looking a bit more interested, “So, Jae-Hwa, how was it? I hope your divorce wasn’t so bad.”

Julian instantaneously gave a disapproving look to Noiz as though he broke Omerta or some other blood-oath. Noiz deflected it as though he were steam in the way of a person running; meant to be ambience, not taken as a concentrated approach, “Well, I hope  it was amicable?”

“How do you describe amicable?” Waylon almost snapped.

“As amicably as it can be explained.” Noiz smirked but seeing Waylon agitated he said, “Why are you so upset, from what I heard it was mutually accepted and acknowledged.”

“It doesn’t always matter…”  Waylon almost shouted as he got up, “I still hate that my relationship with my wife has officially ended. Yes, I am happy there was closure! But fuck!” Waylon screamed now, “I don’t know what to do without my family! All this time I identified myself as a father and a husband and I am really going to miss that!” Waylon was in tears now, “I think a young, unfettered man like you will not at all what I am going through!” Waylon picked up the glass he was drinking water in suddenly and threw it against the wall, to the surprise of Julian and the slight perturbed expression of Noiz, “What do you know?! Any of you! Even if I didn’t submit that video online I know that I couldn’t go back to where I was in life! I mean c’mon I sent a mail against this fucked up corporation and they even falsely charged me and incarcerated me! It is very taxing and I am just so fucked up at the moment! I mean…I…I…” Waylon suddenly just looked at the shattered glass and looked at the expressions of the people around him; the water trickled down on the floor, on the edge of the wood, clinging to pieces of glass that nudged and reflected mirror images, small prisms, glistening H2O and all of that, made Waylon feel culpable. As though he was transmogrified by the pieces of glass, as though he was afraid that his soul was closer to it than flesh. Decidedly he said, “I am sorry…”

Julian looked on a bit softer. Noiz had a flatness, it wasn’t insipid or truly monotonous. It was like a computer assessing what could be done. Then he slowly went forward, catching the attention of Julian, but not really Waylon’s and then Waylon looked up and saw a face near his face…a touch of hand…a slight weight…a slow caress…Waylon hadn’t had time to register it…he took a mouth-full as if to question the action…then lips slowly nudged, touched, cajoled with his and he looked shocked. Julian gulped his food and just drank his glass of water with absolute earnestness. Waylon softly pushed “What are you doing?”

There was a breathless inquisition. Slight anger mixed with annoyance mixed with something akin with slight lust and Noiz smiled: “I have felt in my life kissing makes things better.”

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you Waylon.” Julian resumed eating.

Waylon just looked at Noiz. Then he screamed, “Don’t touch me like that!”  he partly pushed Noiz, “I don’t know you that well, what sort of harassment is this?!”

“So, it’s okay if he know each other well?” Noiz inquired making Waylon fume.

“I don’t think so!” Waylon cried out, “We need to have a mutually respectable relationship at first — why the fuck am I explaining this to you? Don’t you understand how I feel?”

“You may feel a lot of things.” Noiz surmised, “But I am happy you are expressing them now. I wouldn’t know them after you have expressed them.”

Waylon looked at a loss of words. He looked at Julian but Julian seemed to give a gesture that this was not something he wanted to get involved in. Waylon looked like he was about to cry and yell in frustration. “I just wanna eat now and go to my room.”

Noiz saw his expressions and then he said, grabbing Waylon’s face, “Jae-Hwa being mad is not a problem here. I am sorry if I offended you. I wanted you to feel better.” Then he let go and sat down ceremoniously to eat dinner.

Waylon looked at him, then ate his pasta, then he saw a slight bruise near his chin, “Are you hurt?” it seemed he wanted to gain some level of decency, normalcy and just quiet down.

“Oh this…” Noiz touched the scar, “No, not really. I had worn many piercings before…and I didn’t realise how deeply I sometimes pushed them in.”

“That looks like it hurts…” Waylon suddenly looked a bit sad, “Are you, Do you, hurt yourself?”

“Once I did.” Noiz confessed, “But that’s only because I felt nothing. Wasn’t able to. I had CIPA. I think you know what it is. Though it’s been fixed.”

“You never told me about that.” Julian suddenly registered.

“I didn’t think it was important.” Noiz gave a shrug, “Besides it was something I rather avoid as it was nothing to be proud off and made me feel less human. My only senses that really worked were in my mouth.”

Waylon looked at him questionably but then endearingly, “So, everything in your body, translated as blank static, as noise that could not be translated into coherent words, and just bumped on endlessly.”

Julian looked a bit piqued in interest. Noiz looked on. Smiled wide. Then went and cupped Waylon’s face to his bemusement: “ I don’t think anyone understood that as perfectly as you Jae-Hwa.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> About fireweed being eaten raw I HAVE NO HANDS ON KNOWLEDGE I took it from this site http://wildfoodsandmedicines.com/fireweed/ so don't do it 
> 
> This wasn't easy to write. I am a bit sick and I didn't want the first chapter to be that long. However, I wanted it to balance things. And I wasn't exactly sure how to do it. I hope, however, you guys liked what I wrote here. I mean this is like a pretty weird crossover but I thought why not. 
> 
> Comments please :)


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